I'm receiving more and more email requests from people who want to know if I can illustrate their book for them. I'm always flattered because it's always lovely to think that my work is in demand in any way, but I'm struggling to find the time to respond to people individually and take the time to explain how the publishing process works (the publisher will always want to choose the illustrator) and why I'm unable to take on self-published book ideas that don't come via my agent.

If your book is going to be self-published, there may be some illustrators on the SCWBI Facebook group who are keen to work on these types of projects or (if via Ireland) the Illustrators Ireland page.